Dear Readers,
If there’s one thing that can seem to be in short supply in cryptocurrency, it’s privacy. For starters, most cryptocurrencies run on top of public blockchains, which means transactions are permanently displayed for anyone at all to see.
That said, while privacy on a blockchain like Bitcoin’s may seem a bit more difficult, it’s definitely not impossible. For example, last week we talked about how not publicizing your Bitcoin activity and not reusing Bitcoin addresses are easy ways to protect your privacy.
Another privacy tool that is becoming much more common are cryptocurrency mixers, which are services that mix different streams of potentially identifiable cryptocurrency in order to improve anonymity. Bitcoin mixers, for example, work best when many different people all send similar amounts of BTC into the mix at the same time. While inputs and outputs can easily be seen on the blockchain, it’s extremely difficult to tell which mixed input and output are directly linked after they come out of a mixer.
